I was reading a discussion about how Roddenberry's story rules made writing plots for ST:TNG a nightmare in the early seasons, and it got me thinking about the story restraints in place in L5R and the issues they've caused in the past. I think that we can all agree that the story ("plotline" might be a better word) was pretty hit and miss over the 20 years of the CCG, and fairly repetitive at times as well. So I thought it might be interesting to try to delineate what these story restraints were and what issues (if any) they've caused over the years.

I'm not suggesting these are all bad things that need to be "fixed" (some of them are actually pretty core to the setting as we currently understand it), but I am interested to see if FFG tries to make any adjustments to address them. We've really only gotten the broadest strokes about what FFG's Rokugan looks like, after all.

1. Conflict Between the Rokugani Political System and Player Wants

In designing the world of Rokugan, John Wick essentially made a "greatest hits" album of Japanese history. He combined the glamorous imperial court and culture of Heian Japan (8-12th centuries) with the fierce samurai conflicts on the Sengoku period (15-16th centuries) and used details from the Edo period (17-19th centuries) for popular culture and to fill in the gaps where needed.

The issue with this is that a powerful centralized imperial government (the Rokugani political system) doesn't coexist easily with what most players want: frequent non-political conflict between clans (I mean, there's a reason that this combination never actually existed in Japan). Thus we frequently end up with the Emperor either dead/corrupted so that he doesn't exist as an impediment between interclan warfare or an Emperor who appears weak for being unable to keep the clans in check despite being able to just tell them to knock it off. Of the two, the first option seems more popular with most of the player base (there were so many complaints about Naseru and Iweko).

The only way AEG seemed able to sidestep this was to introduce an outside threat for the clans to war against instead of each other, but I think most of us grew kind of sick of that plot device over time.

2. Unwavering Loyalty

The above political bias against interclan warfare is matched with a similar bias against intraclan warfare. Characters were consistently portrayed as being unwaveringly loyal to their families, clan, and the Empire. There was the occasional clan civil war, of course, but generally speaking clan champions never really had to worry about defecting vassals, conspiracies to overthrow them, whether their heir would be accepted, etc. That removes a lot of potential story space. It also clashes with the first point I raised. The clans are shown as loyal to throne, but that doesn't prevent them from constantly engaging in schemes that the Emperor likely wouldn't approve of.

There's a pretty obvious reason for this, of course: clan infighting generally tends to be unpopular with that clan's player base. And even when the players do find it interesting (such as the cultural tensions within the Moshi in Ivory), it's not easy to portray or advance it through the game.

3. No True Winners/Losers

AEG's frequent reluctance to provide definite resolutions to and serious lasting consequences from interclan wars was an often mentioned issue. No one likes losing and they wanted to keep the player bases for each clan happy. AEG never found a solution to this, but if the LCG format reduces clan loyalty as a thing like some fear, this could potentially become less of an issue.

Again, I'm not saying the above are necessarily bad things, but I do feel that they make writing the story challenging. So what do you all think? Do you agree? Any others I missed?

1. The new plot may start with an Emperor. He may be also the last for all we know. Neither do we know how fast the story will advance through the expansions, which also matter.

2. I heard that there was to be civil war in the Unicorn before L5R CCG died? I do not see internal clan strife as a bad thing. It is a better choice than to have the whole clan sitting idle while other clans have fun being important in the story.

3. Unless we are talking "Permanent faction Destruction!!!1!1!11!!", I see no issue with having true losers. That includes my beloved Unicorn. Territories are lost? People dies? Well, that happens in war!!! Or with kolat/ninja/gozoku/bloodspeaker/whatever conspiracies! As long as the journey is well done, it should be ok.

On 4/24/2017 at 10:50 AM, Wintersong said:

2. I heard that there was to be civil war in the Unicorn before L5R CCG died? I do not see internal clan strife as a bad thing. It is a better choice than to have the whole clan sitting idle while other clans have fun being important in the story.

The result of the Unicorn GenCon vote was that the Unicorn would address the Shinjo/Moto leadership deal. A civil war for a Clan which had a "don't kill kin"policy was something I'm sorry we never got to see.

And yes, more internal strife (especially for Clans with plenty of room for it in their DNA, like the Phoenix) wouldn't have been taken amiss. I think it was avoided partly because Clan Loyalty was a thing, but also because those plots leave the Clan playing solitaire, and any story dealing with it won't appeal to any other fanbase on the surface of things.

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3. Unless we are talking "Permanent faction Destruction!!!1!1!11!!", I see no issue with having true losers. That includes my beloved Unicorn. Territories are lost? People dies? Well, that happens in war!!! Or with kolat/ninja/gozoku/bloodspeaker/whatever conspiracies! As long as the journey is well done, it should be ok.

Oh, we had true losers sometimes... just ask anyone who wanted to build a Phoenix deck in the immediate post-Clan War environment.

But the execution was definitely... off. Most wars between Clans would get called on account of outside forces (Dragon versus Phoenix, Phoenix versus Mantis when Yoritomo had to go be his twenty strongest, Crane/Mantis in the Colonies), or just peter out or end to no one's satisfaction (which is at least realistic...).

I can say, though, speaking from the perspective of a Phoenix fan, that wins, not losses, were what the narrative was missing a lot of the time.

9 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

Oh, we had true losers sometimes... just ask anyone who wanted to build a Phoenix deck in the immediate post-Clan War environment.

But the execution was definitely... off. Most wars between Clans would get called on account of outside forces (Dragon versus Phoenix, Phoenix versus Mantis when Yoritomo had to go be his twenty strongest, Crane/Mantis in the Colonies), or just peter out or end to no one's satisfaction(which is at least realistic...).

I can say, though, speaking from the perspective of a Phoenix fan, that wins, not losses, were what the narrative was missing a lot of the time.

Sure, but there was less than a year between Jade's release and DJH and all it gave the Phoenix.

Yeah, I was actually thinking of the Phoenix when I referred to a lack of serious lasting consequences. As you intimate, the Phoenix lost a lot of fights over the course of the game, especially early on. I actually re-read through all the old fictions a few years ago and it was kind of jarring how often the Phoenix took heavy casualties.

I mean, they're the smallest clan to start with, then:

1126-1128: They take heavy enough losses in the Clan Wars that they're forced to let ronin join to replenish their numbers

1132-1133: Invaded by the Mantis

1158-1161: War against the Dragon

1165: Siege of Gisei Toshi

1167: War of Fire and Thunder

That's a lot of heavy fighting over forty years (and ignores most of the Empire-wide conflicts going on in between), much of which went against the Phoenix. But the Clan Wars were the only one that seemed to have any real after effects. Otherwise, the clan always seemed to be restored to full strength when the next conflict came. Now, this must have sucked for Phoenix players and I'm not complaining that the clan wasn't crippled and unable to participate in the story, but it illustrates the point.

That's only one aspect of the much wider problem of AEG trying to cram way too much into way too little time. There were only two significant (generational) time jumps in the entire L5R saga ; there should have been two or three more. Particularly, the death of the Toturi dynasty should have been a multi-generational time jump to the end of a lasting Toturi dynasty, not some hackneyed series of plot contrivances to wipe out every last person of influence in the Empire (not blaming the story team, who managed to make a good story out of it anyway ; but I'm pretty sure the necessities of the Race for the Throne concept weren't their idea).

3 hours ago, Yoritomo Reiu said:

That's a lot of heavy fighting over forty years

Phoenix losing all the time over forty years, hell-let's look at some others- in shorter timeframes. (The Phoenix's pathetic track record- zero outright wins on their own merits in the entire history of the game- remains something I am entirely too well versed on- you didn't even get to the War of Dark Fire, or the War of the Twins...)

The Lion: The whole throwdown with Chagatai, followed by carrying a lot of weight in the War of Dark Fire (for some reason), then serving on the frontlines of the Destroyer War. That's like... three major wars in a two year span.

The Unicorn: Same thing, with arguably worse losses due to a smaller overall population.

The Crab: Go right from Yasuki War III to helping in the War of Dark Fire, to getting their faces pushed in during the Destroyer War.

Yes, those are the three big military clans, but to say they should have been able to keep that up is patently ludicrous.

I think that all of the issues addressed by the original post were real limitations in the story that I hope are handled differently this time around. Here's my thoughts about each of these:

1. The solution here is to say that the central government is not actually powerful, which makes sense given the actual realities of the Clan structure in Rokugan. Power in Feudal systems is fundamentally about land ownerhip. Most of the land is in the hand of the Clan nobility. Therefore, the emperor and the Imperial families are weak. The centralised structures that were gradually invented for Rokugan should be ignored. No Imperial Army -- only Clan armies. The Emperor's power is the unquestioned respect he is given. But if the honor of Rokugani fades, the imperial power vanishes. This allows for satisfying and appropriate civil war story lines, which for me are by far the most interesting.

2. Unwavering loyalty just has to go. It was by far the most boring thing in the original setting. Every Clan should have multiple villains. This is what keeps each clan interesting. Every clan should have selfish people who, even if they act honorably, are motivated by personal interests. These kind of characters make great Rokugani villains, because they are relatable, but at the same time deeply dangerous to Rokugani society. All heroes and no villains make Jack a dull boy. Following Bushido is HARD. Samurai should fall short, regularly. There should be cynics and people who abuse the system -- and not just Scorpion. This makes the genuine heroism stand out more and be more impressive. When everyone is a perfect Samurai, being a perfect samurai is cheapened.

3. No true winners/losers: this is to me a bit less key, but I am very much on board. Have clear conflicts, with clear stakes, and resolve them.

With my professional writer hat on (and the anthropologist feather in its band), I have to say that the points raised in the OP are spot-on. Clan-vs-clan war of the sort the card game fosters just doesn't make sense in the context of a strong centralized government; you need the Empire to look more like a loose federation of states for that to happen. Otherwise the conflicts are more likely to be central power vs. uppity subordinates. And as Eugene said, when the bulk of power derives from land ownership and most of the land belongs to the clans (who may in theory hold it for the Emperor, but they're the ones deriving the majority of the benefits), that's going to weaken imperial power. There's a span of a few centuries in English history where the government was supposed to be funded entirely by revenue from Crown lands and the very occasional limited-term tax, but government got more expensive hand-in-hand with the Crown hocking those lands for ready cash and thus decreasing their future income; this was one of the factors that set off the English Civil War. In Rokugan you supposedly have the imperial government being funded by extensive taxes . . . which they enforce with imperial armies . . . which are made up in large part of clan samurai. If imperial power is respected and strong, they won't let the clans fight each other much because that's bad for imperial revenue. If imperial power is weak and disrespected, how do they keep those taxes flowing in? It doesn't quite hang together. It makes much more sense if imperial power is weak, most of their limited revenue comes from their small quantities of land, and the entire thing keeps working for a thousand years only because this is a world where the divine origins and mandate of the Emperor are indisputable fact.

And in my campaigns, I have a lot more in the way of intra-clan strife. I actually don't see why this can't work on a story level -- Gunichi, when you say it leaves the Clans playing solitaire, do you mean that in the context of the card game and how it affected the story? Or do you just mean that, say, only Lion players will care about the outcome of a power struggle between the Akodo and the Matsu? I don't think the latter is true if the story is good (especially since internal strife can still involve outside influence). On the card game level, I'll admit I don't quite know how the setup worked for tournaments dictating the course of the story, but I don't see why there couldn't be something like "the top-ranked Lion player gets to choose which family gets the upper hand" or something.

As for losses . . . well. Characters can die, territory can change hands, but you do have the inherent problem that you can't fundamentally change the nature of a given clan without creating problems, which means they're limited in how much they can grow as meta-characters in their own right. So that one is kind of baked into the nature of franchise storytelling, as opposed to this specific iteration thereof.

8 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

Gunichi, when you say it leaves the Clans playing solitaire, do you mean that in the context of the card game and how it affected the story? Or do you just mean that, say, only Lion players will care about the outcome of a power struggle between the Akodo and the Matsu? I don't think the latter is true if the story is good (especially since internal strife can still involve outside influence). On the card game level, I'll admit I don't quite know how the setup worked for tournaments dictating the course of the story, but I don't see why there couldn't be something like "the top-ranked Lion player gets to choose which family gets the upper hand" or something.

I refer mostly to how AEG was handling the story... any Clan civil war worthy of the name is going to concern primarily members of that Clan, and take time to develop. And while they were pretty bad at giving certain clans story time *coughPhoenixweremostlyabsentfromthestoryfromtheendoftheWarofDarkFireinlate2009untiltheNewMotoCurserolledoutinlate2014cough*, they did try to spread time allotment around. Which meant that a Clan having internal strife would monkeywrench that- people who Do Not Care about a given Clan and want to know what their own faction is up to respond poorly to that sort of thing. Granted, even multi-Clan tussles did this- I, for example didn't care who won the Crane/Mantis war in Emperor/Ivory Edition because neither Clan interested me in the slightest except in a desire to somehow see them both lose- but they were serving more than a single clan's fanbase in that conflict.

And while I would hope that a sufficiently well-written civil war could catch the interest of readers of all stripes... I would not discount the,"but what the heck are the Flying Purple Hippo Clan doing while the Lion punch themselves in the face for a year and a half?"

10 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

I refer mostly to how AEG was handling the story... any Clan civil war worthy of the name is going to concern primarily members of that Clan, and take time to develop. And while they were pretty bad at giving certain clans story time *coughPhoenixweremostlyabsentfromthestoryfromtheendoftheWarofDarkFireinlate2009untiltheNewMotoCurserolledoutinlate2014cough*, they did try to spread time allotment around. Which meant that a Clan having internal strife would monkeywrench that- people who Do Not Care about a given Clan and want to know what their own faction is up to respond poorly to that sort of thing. Granted, even multi-Clan tussles did this- I, for example didn't care who won the Crane/Mantis war in Emperor/Ivory Edition because neither Clan interested me in the slightest except in a desire to somehow see them both lose- but they were serving more than a single clan's fanbase in that conflict.

And while I would hope that a sufficiently well-written civil war could catch the interest of readers of all stripes... I would not discount the,"but what the heck are the Flying Purple Hippo Clan doing while the Lion punch themselves in the face for a year and a half?"

Fair point that page time is a limited resource. You can't fully develop an internal Lion conflict (or whatever) without devoting a lot of words to it, and those words are going to come at the expense of other factions. I do think it's possible to indicate that such conflicts are going on without having them hog all the attention, but they would be more in the vein of references to the struggle and the occasional key moment getting the spotlight, rather than being played out in full technicolor glory.

1 hour ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

And while I would hope that a sufficiently well-written civil war could catch the interest of readers of all stripes... I would not discount the,"but what the heck are the Flying Purple Hippo Clan doing while the Lion punch themselves in the face for a year and a half?"

Addressing this isn't that hard, actually. You just need a bunch of samurai from other clans on a Warrior's Pilgrimage to hop into the fight. They would have all the reasons to do it, and the gloves are off for them anyway, so you can have a dozen Flying Purple Hippo samurai fighting for the Lion and through their POV we can learn what's happening around the Flying Purple Hippo Clan. We just need musha shugyo to be a bigger thing than it is now.

1 hour ago, Kinzen said:

Clan-vs-clan war of the sort the card game fosters just doesn't make sense in the context of a strong centralized government; you need the Empire to look more like a loose federation of states for that to happen.

Not necessarily. You can turn the Empire into a meritocracy, and then pull the whole thing through the way of thinking of a warrior society. Meaning that your meritocracy might suddenly accept Darwinism as a way to show merit. I mean, in the end, it definitely shows an aptitude if you march your army into your rival's castle, you just gotta keep the whole conflict in check (the Imperial Observers assigned to you will definitely help). Cross the line, and you are no longer showing merit but harming the Empire - and that's a big no-no. Obviously, higher the warring goes, more the Empire will tolerate (putting a farm to a torch in a provincial fighting is a big deal - a farm getting burnt down in a clan-scale struggle is a sad but ultimately affordable loss).

The only problem with this is that inheritance is supposedly a big thing in Rokugan as of now, and a sudden swap to meritocracy might be pushing things a little too far.

I thought the lore implied that the Clans were significantly stronger than the imperial families. That's why the role of the Otomo family and the Scorpion Clan was in part to favor petty infighting between the Clans. This was done to avoid them uniting or overthrowing the Emperor. So allowing the wars to go on unless they got really out of hand was in the Empire's benefit

I don't know whether that is even remotely realistic, but i recall that being the explanation.

41 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Addressing this isn't that hard, actually. You just need a bunch of samurai from other clans on a Warrior's Pilgrimage to hop into the fight. They would have all the reasons to do it, and the gloves are off for them anyway, so you can have a dozen Flying Purple Hippo samurai fighting for the Lion and through their POV we can learn what's happening around the Flying Purple Hippo Clan. We just need musha shugyo to be a bigger thing than it is now.

Ah, but this fix has its own problems... namely, horning in on the story of the clan whose civil war it is.

A rough corollary can be found in the War of Dark Fire- where the fall of Kyuden Isawa (yeah, it got leveled by the Master of Earth to keep the Yobanjin from sacking it, then it got better,because, you know, why not) was not presented as great Phoenix tragedy,or even as much of a Phoenix story- it was presented as a chance for the Council to dither about what to do, and for samurai from several other Clans to stand around in a courtyard trying to act blase (because their clans had won kotei or something). Even the token Phoenix in the courtyard with them was presented as more exasperated than appalled, but the fact remains, the fiction covering the loss of one of their most important strongholds should have been a nearly all-Phoenix show. It wasn't, and that particular segment is not exactly well-regarded as a direct result.

It can be done- observers, ambassadors, magistrates under Imperial authority operating in the warzone- but to take the focus of the conflict itself away from the primary party is also a problem. If the story is a Lion civil war, following a bunch of Flying Purple Hippo samurai on Musha Shugyo fighting for one side or the other is doing that tale a bit of a disservice.

11 minutes ago, Shiba Gunichi said:

If the story is a Lion civil war, following a bunch of Flying Purple Hippo samurai on Musha Shugyo fighting for one side or the other is doing that tale a bit of a disservice.

Eh. It is entirely a thing for good writing. Drastic POV swaps are supposedly good stuff, because they let the reader see the conflict from a vastly different viewpoint. Done well, and it will reveal interesting tidbits and add color to the story; done wrong, and what-you-say happens.

The thing about intra-clan conflict is that it really is hard to adequately sell to the player base. Not that I don't think it can be done, but there are plenty of people whose basic reaction is: bad for clan = I hate it. So as soon as some internal enemy comes along, people get mad because it makes the clan weaker in fantasy Rokugan.

We saw this directly with the shadowed tower storyline. Lots of that was, I thought, pretty well handled by the story team, but much of the scorpion player base was just "let's get this over with as fast as we can". Because it bugged them that it made the scorpion weak, and supposedly because the scorpion virtue is loyalty we shouldn't have traitors. Oh, and Yogo Junzo was enough scorpion treachery for forever. I was fine with 'I support the loyalists and hope they win' obviously, but I was surprised at the time how much of the response seemed to be 'this whole storyline should die in a fire'. It probably didn't help that the Gozoku storyline that emerged out of it was such a damp squib of an afterthought.I think that there was where the storyline team's general difficulty with making villains except Daigotsu (and maybe Jimen) interesting really kind of let them down.

I want to see more conflict at the individual and small-group levels. Those stories are more interesting to me and don't need to rely on Imperial apathy/incompetence to stay believable.

8 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Not necessarily. You can turn the Empire into a meritocracy, and then pull the whole thing through the way of thinking of a warrior society. Meaning that your meritocracy might suddenly accept Darwinism as a way to show merit. I mean, in the end, it definitely shows an aptitude if you march your army into your rival's castle, you just gotta keep the whole conflict in check (the Imperial Observers assigned to you will definitely help). Cross the line, and you are no longer showing merit but harming the Empire - and that's a big no-no. Obviously, higher the warring goes, more the Empire will tolerate (putting a farm to a torch in a provincial fighting is a big deal - a farm getting burnt down in a clan-scale struggle is a sad but ultimately affordable loss).

The only problem with this is that inheritance is supposedly a big thing in Rokugan as of now, and a sudden swap to meritocracy might be pushing things a little too far.

When I was reading about the Heian Period a while ago, one of the things that became clear to me was how Japan's attempts to adopt Chinese-style bureaucracy were hampered by the fact that they failed to also adopt the system of meritocratic examinations. That's how you wound up with the Fujiwara just running everything.

But I'll note that the "meritocratic warrior" approach still runs aground somewhat on the fact that any destruction is still coming at the ultimate expense of the Emperor. That farm you torched produced rice that became imperial tax revenue, and while some losses can be absorbed, none of them are really desirable. Furthermore, encouraging your vassals to get stronger by chewing on each other creates risks: it undermines any sense of national unity, destabilizes the balance of power between your factions, and undercuts loyalty to the guy at the top, because he's the jerk who's letting your neighbor stomp all over you and saying "well, if you lose then it means you're weak and deserve it." And sooner or later you have to put the brakes on that "show your merit!" thing . . . because otherwise you're going to eventually get somebody who shows his merit by beating all his neighbors, and if you don't stop him then he's going to start wondering why this one neighbor on the fancy chair should be exempt.

Isolationism tends to play into this, too. Having a "them" helps define the "us", even when your conflicts are just based on trade or other issues rather than all-out war. Rokugan is so cut off from the outside, though, that it's hard to imagine a strong sense of "us = Rokugan" persisting when "they" are so rarely seen. I find it much more plausible that "us" tends to be the clan identity, with the Empire serving as a more abstract unifying principle. In fact, now that I think about it, I suspect analogizing to pre-Reformation Europe is a great model: sure, theoretically all the countries are unified in Catholic Christendom, but in practice national identity is the most important one. And the pope's authority to control things waxes and wanes and only supercedes that of a king in specific circumstances, or when you have a *really* strong pope.

18 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

And sooner or later you have to put the brakes on that "show your merit!" thing . . . because otherwise you're going to eventually get somebody who shows his merit by beating all his neighbors, and if you don't stop him then he's going to start wondering why this one neighbor on the fancy chair should be exempt.

This (as well as the other things you mentioned) is supposed to be a major plot device. A feature rather than a bug, so to speak. This is how you can get conflicts like the Clan Wars: one guy decides that he is the strongest dog, starts screwing people up because it is supposedly okay, and the Emperor (no mater how strong he is) just can't really stop him because what the dude does is supposedly okay - then it just spirals out of control and suddenly everyone is fighting everyone.

A similar thing goes for collateral damage: whether a peasant's broken fork will hinder imperial business is a major topic of argument at the courts, where courtiers try to undermine the enemy faction by blowing the damage they do out of proportions while saying that the damage their faction is doing is irrelevant (and they will rebuild all that stuff ten times better anyway).

The only thing I can't see happening for real is samurai being sad about the Emperor allowing conflict. I mean... that's like a fisherman being sad about the ocean being wet .

The story team does have a challenge ahead of them. It will be difficult to make everyone happy with so many different clans while trying to keep things interesting.

I'm curious to see what they do but I hope they keep a tight reign on player influence. Let us pick between two or three logical options when given a choice but don't leave an option completely open. Otherwise you end up with odd story moments just because they are weird.

5 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This (as well as the other things you mentioned) is supposed to be a major plot device. A feature rather than a bug, so to speak.

That works if you use it sparingly. But if Rokugan has been run this way for a thousand years, then I call b.s. on the idea that there has been one imperial dynasty this entire time; you would have a lot more changeover. Or else you'd do it the way historical Japan did, and keep the same (largely ceremonial) imperial dynasty by instituting a different office with real political and military power that will be the one to take the hits of "suck it, I'm stronger than you so now I'm in charge." And even then, the shoguns didn't generally want their vassals to fight each other, because they didn't want to threaten their own control. I can't think of a single real-world government that persisted for an extended period of time by encouraging internecine warfare in the name of "making people stronger" -- they much preferred for their people to fight outsiders. Though if you have an example, do share so I can go read up on it.

• Emperor sanctions a war between some clans because of honor reasons.
• Emperor decreets war against some clans because of treason (kolat, gozoku, bloodspeaker, etc).
• Clans fight over Imperial control after Emperor (and the whole known bloodline) dies.
• Clans fight against shadowlands threat that naturaly evolves to some clan conflicts.
• We get some cycles with no wars of any kind. Everything are political plots and some minor skirmishes.
• Someone uses the Egg of PanKu on the Emperor?
• Selective high ranking assassinations in all the clans lead to interclan conflict that evolves into opportunistics out of clan attacks.
• The Emperor declares Mortal Kombat.

13 minutes ago, Kinzen said:

That works if you use it sparingly.

This should be the case, obviously. I assume the Emperor holds quite a lot of power through a vast network of social (communications via Miya Heralds), economical (bestest administration via the Imperial Bureaucracy), and political (it is a meritocracy, baby, so the Emperor is calling the shots and making the appointments, not your bloodline) means supported by a solid military ("always outnumbered, never outmatched" is the official Imperial Legions motto). That way, you have to possess a very unique kind of stupidity to challenge the Emperor. Because once that guy pulls the plug on you, the game steps up a few levels in difficulty. If you make that far and not get your butt sentenced by the Emerald Office for conspiring against the throne before you can make your move.

And this does not even consider the whole supernatural aspect, like Amaterasu raining down some fire on your army/lands (or do something equally unpleasant) because you have bad thoughts about her chosen champion.

5 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I assume the Emperor holds quite a lot of power through a vast network of social (communications via Miya Heralds), economical (bestest administration via the Imperial Bureaucracy), and political (it is a meritocracy, baby, so the Emperor is calling the shots and making the appointments, not your bloodline) means supported by a solid military ("always outnumbered, never outmatched" is the official Imperial Legions motto). That way, you have to possess a very unique kind of stupidity to challenge the Emperor. Because once that guy pulls the plug on you, the game steps up a few levels in difficulty. If you make that far and not get your butt sentenced by the Emerald Office for conspiring against the throne before you can make your move.

But that description already contains problems and unexamined assumptions. A handful of Miya Heralds and Otomo Courtiers does not a vast network make, and without extensive territory of their own, how are those families anything but small? How does the Emperor dominate politically in a society based on "prove what you can do" when he earned his place through birth (ascribed merit) rather than deeds (achieved merit)? How does the Emperor have economic power? Through taxation of the clans. How does he enforce that taxation? With an army that's . . . mostly drawn from the clans. Which means he holds "quite a lot of power" only as long as the people beneath him are willing to play along. Which means that encouraging a dog-eat-dog, might-makes-right idea of meritocracy is a quick route to losing that power. An Emperor in the position you describe should be looking outside his own borders for external enemies, not undercutting half his base of power with the other half and encouraging people to notice that there's no reason other than tradition for his butt to be on the throne.

Well, I was thinking about a "quality has a quantity of its own" kind of deal, but giving it a second thought, it might be quite wonky all things considered.

You see, I based my insights on the setting my gaming group uses... but the more I think about it, the more I realize that things are a lot more complicated there. Like, we do have meritocratic ascension for the Emperor too, and the economy actually works the other way around (it isn't the lords who are giving resources to the Emperor in form of tax, but the Emperor is providing resources to the lords via the Bureaucracy controlled enabling/distribution system).

Hum... I need to ponder on this more. I'm sure that it can still work - maybe with some willing suspension of disbelief - but the actual "how" is eluding me.

For my part, I'd love to see the Emperor come off more like the Padishah Emperor from Dune: powerful on paper, but ultimately a figurehead so mired in politics and backroom alliances that he can't even save people he genuinely likes. The Gozoku's a close parallel, of course, but the attempt at reviving them in AEG-L5R was a bit off -- aside from being an offshoot of the corrupt Shadowed Tower of the Scorpion, it only worked by fiat. We never got a good explanation why Naseru of all people was having trouble with the Gozoku, just that he was.

Speaking personally, the problem with civil war storylines is either they're too brief (the Clan War civil war between Tsuko's death and Day of Thunder was over before players could really impact), or they were badly designed between characters with one who's clearly not just evil, but evil in such a way that logically the bulk of the clan should be opposing them. For instance, the Mantis internal war of Kitao vs. Kumiko had no real reason to refuse Kumiko beyond the Shadowlands taint from her birth, whereas Kitao was objectively and known to be a Scorpion collaborator who was directly responsible for Aramasu's death. Sure, as a Scorpion player, I'd have loved Kitao in charge, but the story gave virtually no reason for Mantis players to support her. Even the Shadowlands taint, had it remained part of Kumiko's character, could've been used to establish that the Mantis adopted their champions -- a fitting way to show their disdain for tradition over worthiness.

To show how I think this could be fixed, let's go back to the Shadowed Tower. Originally, it was spawned by Atsuki wanting to make a power grab by reviving the Gozoku he'd led during his previous life, but Yojiro and Nimuro had already agreed to place clansmen among each of the Winds' inner circles, the better to manipulate the would-be Emperors. Essentially, the Scorpion and Lion were on their way to making the Gozoku anyway, just without consciously using that term to do it.

What if, instead of Atsuki wanting power, he realized how bad an idea this was? Everything else remains the same, right down to the desperation in using maho, but he's genuinely trying to protect the clan and the throne from the mistakes he made in life? Yojiro would still somewhat correct in that none of the Winds are people that can be trusted to do the job without guidance, but Atsuki is now trying to protect the Scorpion from overstepping their bounds and upsetting the natural order.